


First Thaw

by overthewaterfall



Category: Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:01:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25677004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overthewaterfall/pseuds/overthewaterfall
Summary: Bella, in the months unseen.
Relationships: Bella Swan & Angela Weber, Bella Swan & Charlie Swan
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	First Thaw

**Author's Note:**

> Circa New Moon, starting at the infamous pages/parts left blank. Just zagging where the original story zigs. Any bits of canon that I didn't care to Google I made up. ✌️

He’s gone.

It’s raining outside. You hated the incessant tapping of it when you first moved here, but you lie awake now, drawing in slow breaths as it raps on the roof, spills from leaves.

He’s gone.

It wasn’t safe, what you had with him, but it was yours. Whatever it was. The ownership of that feels important, a place where you hold secret a thing that mattered to you.

You have more of those places than you realized. He made you realize you had them.

Without him, you feel as though they exist only for you to thumb through like an album, preservation of brighter versions of you. You found them and now you’ve hit the boundary of them, the wall where they sharply stop. You feel like there’s nothing new to discover, every door closed so you don’t have to face how empty it feels to look inside.

He’s gone.

A week has passed. Or has it been two?

You still remind yourself: he’s gone.

Sometimes you let the thought drop like a penny into a well, a brief flash in the light before it sinks. Sometimes it rips through, leaving you gasping in its wake.

You either sleep through entire days or you don’t sleep at all.

He’s gone.

You wake and feel his absence almost more than you ever did his presence. That empty space molds to you, keeps everything that much further away, makes every room quiet. You feel more than realize how little he let you hold him.

It takes you much, much longer to realize he never actually held you.

He’s gone.

Dad makes the rare intrusion into your room. He sits at the foot of the bed, places an awkward hand on your ankle over your comforter and sheets. He asks softly if you want a ride to school.

You wonder when you started thinking of him as Dad again instead of holding his name between you like a warning, when you stopped being angry long enough to tap into the well of memory where he read to you at bedtime and stayed up with you while you were sick. He doesn’t press you for an answer now, just waits silently. There’s gray at his temples now. His eyes are lined with too many nights of too little sleep.

There’s a tightening in your throat when you realize you forgot him, but he didn’t forget you.

He’s gone.

Some motions are so well-oiled that your limbs shape them without any input from you. Your hands pull your unbrushed hair back, secure it with an elastic band. Your socked feet step into your scuffed sneakers.

You wrap yourself in clothes that lose you inside of them, and you shuffle forward into the day.

He’s gone.

He left you with your mortality and called it a blessing, but it feels like he took something you can never get back anyway.

He’s gone.

Somewhere around the two-month mark you’re in the cafeteria at lunch, pushing boiled broccoli around on your tray and watching it disintegrate into grainy green pulp. You have mid-terms coming up and your focus is still scattered.

And then you hear it: a snicker. A whisper.

His name.

You stand up, viciously drop your tray and utensils into the dirties bin, and start walking with a purpose you haven’t felt in weeks. You slam open the cafeteria doors. You don’t stop until you’re all the way down the hall, in the student parking lot, and then inside your truck.

Once you open your mouth, you wonder why you weren’t screaming this entire time.

He’s gone.

Dad sends you on a run to the hardware store. He’s asking you for help with a lot of these little errands lately, maybe because he doesn’t know what to do to help other than feed you and keep you busy.

So here you are, list in hand, his blocky scrawl spelling out WD-40, a few drill bits and their sizes, Drano (for the tub you keep clogging with your hair), a mesh drain cover (so you’ll finally stop). There’s something soothing about moving methodically from aisle to aisle, even when there are no more items you need. You mindlessly re-sort washers so they’re in the right canisters with others of their size, put orphaned boxes of batteries and nails back onto their proper display hooks.

When you get to the register, the store owner Mrs. Segan mentions you’re good at that, organizing, and you jump. Then you blush, realizing you were watched.

You leave with everything on the list and, improbably, an after-school job.

He’s gone.

You’re assigned a group to do a presentation in French. You’re supposed to pick a film to cover and Jessica takes charge early, her insistence that you can’t go wrong with French New Wave rolling right over everyone’s heads. She tells the group to watch all of her selections to pick a movie, the thought more of a directive than a suggestion. When she emails the list that night, you scroll through.

And just like that, you remember: the way his eyebrows raised and pulled together after you told him you’d never seen _The 400 Blows_. How you took his exasperation as fondness but he didn’t offer to watch it with you either, content to laugh at you for not having seen it.

You watch everything on the list but that movie, pretending when asked that you didn’t care for it. You work hard on refining your part of the presentation instead, making sure your section is grammatically sound and technically precise. Even Jessica ends up complimenting you on your pronunciation.

Maybe you’re not the smartest, but you know how to work. You know how to assemble disparate parts. On the next project, you volunteer to take on more.

He’s gone.

Angela is studying alone at a coffee shop downtown, her notebooks, pens, and highlighters scattered across the pale oak tabletop. You approach her, iced coffee in either hand. Your heart is hammering; you don’t know how to do this. There’s a reason you haven’t tried very often, and she has more reasons than not to reject you.

When your therapist assigned this homework, you nearly walked out the door. You’d promised Dad, though, so you didn’t, and you’re here now. You desperately want to turn back around. But you’re already almost at her table and everyone in the café will know if you chicken out now.

She looks up. You hold out one of the coffees and ask if it’s okay to sit down. Your voice only shakes a little when you add, _Please_.

When she takes the cup from you and clears space on the tabletop, you exhale and crack a smile that you feel all the way down to your toes.

He’s gone.

Eric asks if you’re going to prom this year. He’s not asking you to go with him, exactly, but in his voice there’s that telltale note of curiosity guarded by carefulness. You think about it for a moment, test the thought against the memories it dredges up. There’s an ache that feels more like phantom pain, a bruise that hurts when pressed but is already yellowing, fading at the edges.

You say you’re still thinking about it. The week after, you buy a ticket to go stag.

He’s gone.

You sit outside on a rare clear day, the grass tall around you and the flowers drowsing in the breeze. The book open in your lap looked interesting in the library but it’s actually a little dry, so you’re skimming. You have another picked out that’s waiting in your bag if this doesn’t suit after all. Beside you, a noise pings: a text from Dad about dinner. You tap out a reply letting him know you’ll be home, then put the phone down again.

Your dress is new, something you chose because the bright cotton tucked in and flared out on your body in a way that made you feel new too, like the shape of you finally made sense. You bought it for yourself, with money you saved from working at the hardware store. You hadn’t worn it before today because the bite of winter had lingered longer than usual, but you didn’t hesitate to cut the tags when you first brought it home.

It reflects some of the sun back to you now, catching the light in a way that makes it look like you’re wearing it.

Turning your face up, you feel the warmth of the day. The rest of it is yours.


End file.
